Violations of choice transitivity depend on “within-attribute” vs. “within-alternative” processes

Abstract Choice transitivity (CT) is a central axiom of rationality. While violating CT is rare, there have been reports of such violations (Tversky, 1969; Tsetsos et al., 2016; but see Regenwetter, 2011). If humans indeed violate CT, an important challenge is understanding the conditions that promote intransitive choices and the mechanisms that support it. Here, we report the presence of CT violations (CTV) using a strict data analysis method (Regenwetter, 2011) and an experimental design where each choice is presented on a single visual display, avoiding averaging artifacts (Davis-Stober et al., 2016). In three experiments (one of which is a pre-registered replication), we provide evidence for CTV in human (student) participants. In addition, we find a dependence of the CTV-rate on the mode of information processing. A higher CTV-rate occurs when the choice stimuli are presented grouped by attributes compared to when the same stimuli are grouped by alternatives.